Mike McLoughlin's Blog

"I forgive! I forgive!" These were the dying words of Sister Leonella who was gunned down by Muslim extremists in Somalia last week. ("I forgive" whispers dying Italian nun).

I have heard it said, " Forgiveness is the fragrance of the violet which still clings fast to the heel that crushed it."

There is great power in the fragrance of Sister Leonella's forgiveness. Power that is greater than all the signs and wonders the church would hope to unleash to prove the love of God. Forgiveness is a power that does not overwhelm evil, but takes on board the full measure of the pain of evil. By allowing evil to do its worse and not returning evil for evil, it captures the evil act for God and uses it to demonstrate a power that is greater, the power of love.

Today I look at the notions of power and authority and how they work in the Kingdom of God. Power and authority are not the same thing. One can have power without authority. For example, those gunman in Somalia exercised their power to kill Sister Leonella. They had no authority to do it. There can be no rational legitimization for murdering an innocent nun.

On the other hand, one can have authority but have no power to exercise that authority. The recently deposed Prime Minister of Thailand has a legitimate authority to govern the country but without the military on his side he no longer exercises that authority.

One can have the authority to exercise power such as President Bush has, but by exercising that power unwisely and alienating people, it will reduce the legitimacy of the authority that stands behind the exercise of that power.

Finally, one can exercise power wisely and in doing so gain authority in the minds and hearts of the people who one wants to influence for good.

The Kingdom of God is all about that last approach. In this post I want to contrast the Charismatic approach to gaining authority through the exercise of power: signs and wonders; with what the gospel of Mark says is the true pathway to authority inherent in the gospel -- the Cross. In doing so I want to challenge the Charismatic church to earn its authority in and through the pain rather than seeking to earn that authority through the "raw power" of signs and wonders.

In a previous post on Bill Johnson’s book When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide To A Life Of Miracles, I talked about how the Charismatic Church needs to ground its hope in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the event that established once and for all that God intends to redeem creation. The resurrection is an affirmation of our creatureliness so we do not need to be insecure about the “natural” because as Johnson says “the anointing transforms the vessel it flows through.” That is, the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is at work even now in our naturalness empowering us to do God’s work.

Johnson’s stated purpose for his book is to raise up a generation that would walk in the “raw power of God”. By that he means demonstrations of God’s power to heal and set people free from spiritual oppression. His hope is for a Church that would operate in the authority of God and have a “dominating impact.”

He states that “vision starts with identity and purpose. Through a revolution in our identity, we can think with divine purpose. Such a change begins with a revelation of Him.” (p.34) So in his chapter on the Christian identity. Johnson states that “As He is, so are we in this world.” (p. 145) Since Christ is glorified, powerful, triumphant and holy so we are to be as well as his church. This is what ought to be shaping our Christian identity as Christ followers. This is what will give us the authority to have a dominating impact.

“His promises for the Church are beyond all comprehension. Too many consider them to be God’s promise either for the Millennium or heaven, claiming that to emphasize God’s plan for now instead of eternity is to dishonor the fact that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us. Our predisposition toward a weak Church has blinded our eyes to the truths of God’s Word about us. This problem is rooted in our unbelief, not in our hunger for heaven. Jesus taught us how to live by announcing, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” It is a present reality, affecting the now.

We lack understanding of who we are because we have little revelation of who He is. We know a lot about His life on earth. The Gospels are filled with information about what He was like, how He lived, and what He did. Yet that is not the example of what the church is to become. What He is today, glorified, seated at the right hand of the Father, is the model for what we are becoming!” (p. 178)

Johnson goes on to give a list of “the heart of God for us right now.” Wise – especially as demonstrated in excellence, creativity and integrity. Glorious – with the Holy Spirit’s presence and anointing. Without spot or wrinkle; unified; knowing Christ; mature; filled with the fullness of God; with the gifts of the holy Spirit fully expressed; doing the Greater Works and seeing God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. All these are attributes of the Church God wants manifest now. Johnson quotes the passage from Haggai, where the prophet says, “The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former.” (Haggai 2:9)

The problem is that most of the church is mired in powerlessness. Johnson attributes this to being on “the wrong side of the cross.”

“The Christian life is not found on the Cross. It is found because of the Cross. It ... more »

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Sunday, September 10

When Heaven Invades Earth Twenty Four Seven! Grounding the Charismatic Hope in the Resurrection.

by Mike McLoughlin on Sun 10 Sep 2006 11:10 AM PDT

My pastor was preaching last Sunday on heaven invading earth. He wants to see heaven poured out in our worship gatherings so that God’s presence would be so manifest that anything would be possible: salvations, healing, forgiveness, restoration, etc. “Not just fifteen minutes, but an hour and a half or even two hours of extended worship would see this start to happen…” At that point in the sermon I shouted out “TWENTY FOUR SEVEN”! He paused. “Okay! Now that’s faith! Who said that?” He asked, looking over in my direction. I raised my hand. He said “that’s good, that’s right on!” and went on with his message.

He seemed surprised it was me expressing such faith. Perhaps, it was because him and I are having a friendly debate over the nature of reality and how God heals. My wife is a medical doctor. She believes healing is from God whether it comes supernaturally through prayer or naturally through medical skill. For her and I, one way is not necessarily better than the other way.

Our pastor disagrees, preferring a supernatural manifestation of healing. He is taking his cue from a book by Bill Johnson, Senior Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding California entitled When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide To A Life Of Miracles. Johnson’s states “our mandate is simple: raise up a generation that can openly display the raw power of God. This book is all about that journey… the quest for the King and His Kingdom.” (p.27, online here)

As a member of a charismatic church, I believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit are a vital part of the ministry of the church. Healing is one of those gifts. I support and I have benefited from prayer for healing in all its various forms at our fellowship. I have personally seen God’s power at work in our congregation through prophetic utterances, physical manifestations and demonic deliverance. I believe that God is alive and aggressively active in establishing his kingdom on earth through his church.

So I enjoy hearing stories of “power encounters” as John Wimber used to describe them. This is when God’s power confronts, overwhelms and undoes demonic powers in the form of healing or deliverance. I attended a Wimber conference in Edmonton in 1989 in which the power of God was so manifest that it blew the electrical system, dimmed the lights and brought the City emergency services to the building. I have been in prayer meetings and seen evangelistic gatherings where light bulbs blew out and street lamps fizzled and went dark. I believe in the visible tangible demonstration of God’s power.

Bill Johnson’s book is full of these stories and they are of great encouragement to the church. However, I take issue with the way in which he constructs his version of reality. David Ruis, one of the founding pastors of our church, spoke recently on a Sunday morning and one thing he said struck me as capturing this problem. Ruis said, “there is a gospel that can come that puts one thing down to elevate another and that’s always a temptation in the church.” This is what I see Johnson doing in his book.

In the Foreword to the book Jack Taylor sums up Johnson’s view on reality.

“I love this book because it points us toward primary reality in a world almost totally preoccupied with secondary reality. The reader of Scripture is aware that it ultimately defines primary reality as “unseen and eternal” while secondary reality is temporal, that is, it doesn’t last (see 2 Cor. 4:18). Bill Johnson’s beliefs, teachings, and ministry center on primary or Kingdom reality and finds that reality sufficient to change the face of “that which is seen.” (p. 18, online here)

Here is Johnson’s description of the “primary reality”.

The invisible realm is superior to the natural. The reality of that invisible world dominates the natural world we live in…both positively and negatively. Because the invisible is superior to the natural, faith is anchored in the unseen…

Unbelief is anchored in what is visible or reasonable apart from God. It honors the natural realm as superior to the invisible. The apostle Paul states that what you can see is temporal, and what you can’t see is eternal. Unbelief is faith in the inferior. (p. 45, online here.)

For example, Johnson is fond of making the point that there is no cancer in heaven, so when heaven invades earth cancer must go!

“Real faith is not living in denial of the natural realm. If the doctor says you have a tumor, it’s silly to pretend that it’s not there. That’s not faith. However, faith is founded on a reality that is superior to that tumor. I can acknowledge the existence of a tumor and still have faith in the provision of His stripes for my healing…I was provisionally healed 2,000 years ago. It is the product of the kingdom of heaven—a superior reality. There are no tumors in heaven, and faith brings that reality into this one."

While I endorse the fact that there are “no tumors in heaven” and that there is healing in the atonement, and that the prayer of faith brings healing, I cannot endorse the language that divides reality into that which is ‘superior’ verses that which is ‘inferior’.

It is language that puts one thing down (the natural) in order to elevate another thing (the supernatural). It reflects a fundamental insecurity in our creatureliness, (the Latin ‘natura’ means ‘that which we are born with’) as if something is fundamentally wrong with who God made us to be, where God intends us to exist and how God intends us to work...

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